Top 5 places to find a remote programming job

Finding a remote job may sometimes feel like you are looking for a needle in a haystack. Many websites have accepted the challenge of giving programmers an overview of what the market looks like and what companies are willing to hire talent without forcing them to move anywhere in the proximity of the mother ship, but that doesn’t mean they all deliver that promise. Let’s see which are the best places to find a programming job.

More and more companies are not only accepting, but also embracing the idea of hiring remote employees. Forbes contributor Meghan M. Biro said in an article published two years ago that “telecommuting is the future of work.” FlexJobs revealed in its third-annual list of virtual companies which “operate mostly or completely remotely that more businesses are turning to remote work as a sustainable and legitimate workplace model.” The employment website listed 125 virtual companies which truly embrace remote working, including DataStax, GitHub, Mozilla, Upworthy and more.

This employment website claims that software development jobs will be in high demand “as software continues to play a bigger role in the day-to-day lives of individuals and companies.” It relies on the fact that software development jobs will grow faster than other professions through 2022, with 22.8 percent employment growth anticipated.

There have been good experiences and bad ones with FlexJobs, so feel free to share your experience in the Comments section. Is FlexJobs your go-to employment website?

What else? Stack Overflow is a popular choice among programmers, mostly because all job offers are transparent and all the information (including salary) is provided. Plus, you can apply right there so you won’t be redirected to the employer’s website if you don’t want that. And there’s no recruiter spam.

Hacker News may not be visually attractive, but it does the job beautifully. The Who wants to be hired? Who is hiring? and Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? posts are a hit among programmers. What easier way is there to find out that Likelihood, Nava, Magic Leap, Blink Health and Cloud Academy are among the companies that offer jobs (some onsite, others remote) this month?

Job offers are posted as comments, which may become annoying if you skim through all the job offers, but what you see is what you get —no need for fancy, attention-grabbing, descriptions. Less is more, remember?

According to the official description, the jobs listed on this employment website “aren’t restricted by commutes or a particular geographic area.” You may know the creators of We Work Remotely if you’ve already read the book titled Remote, Office Not Required. The book is worth reading because it encourages people to resist the temptation to restrict their job search to companies within a reasonable commute and basically teaches both employees and employers to work together remotely.

There are many websites where programmers can find remote jobs and RemoteCoder is one of them. Although it’s not playing in the big leagues, it is growing and people are starting to pay more attention to it. Once job seekers create a profile and filter jobs, they receive the results via the website’s customizable RSS feeds. They even have a Coder Wall of remote developers, so if you’re not an employer looking to contact them, maybe you are a fellow programmer who wants to exchange ideas or simply network.

If you would like to score a remote job but you are not 100 percent convinced just yet, take a look at this video and discover the challenges and opportunities that go hand in hand with the “remote employee” label.

Bonus

This is off topic, but if you are a female programmer interested in new job opportunities, Tech Ladies is a great start —this community-turned-employment website was created by Allison Esposito, who has lent her voice to companies like Google, Foursquare, Skillshare, and more. Tech Ladies is an online community and meetup a subscriber base of over 2.000 women.

www.hiretechladies.com is meant to help connect women in tech with the jobs they want, and “to connect companies with the best women techmakers.”